ABSTRACT
This is a study of the political culture of citizens in eighteen countries of Western Europe and East and Southeast Asia; it is based on the answers to surveys undertaken at the end of 2000 in both areas with an identical questionnaire. Another volume is inquiring about the extent to which the citizens of the two regions react to the state (forthcoming), while a third examined how far these citizens were aware of and, if so, felt affected positively or negatively by the processes which have come under the general label of globalisation (forthcoming). The present volume aims at delving more deeply into the political culture itself. It is designed to elicit how far the political culture, at the level of the citizens, differs across two regions of the globe and within these regions in terms of basic attitudes to politics and society. The key question with respect to this objective can be summarised in the following way: is there convergence of citizens’ values across the world and in particular in the regions which have moved towards what used to be called ‘modernity’ and may be labelled, according to some, ‘post-modernity’?1
